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Bundee Aki's take on Steve Borthwick's struggling England side

By PA
Bundee Aki tackles Henry Slade - PA

Ireland centre Bundee Aki believes Steve Borthwick’s England will only get better after they ended a forgettable Guinness Six Nations campaign with a steely display against the Grand Slam champions in Dublin.

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The Red Rose, who replaced Eddie Jones with Borthwick in December, endured another underwhelming championship, finishing fourth having lost three of their five matches for the third consecutive year.

A record-breaking round-four 53-10 humiliation against France at Twickenham was a major low for the 2019 World Cup finalists, who also suffered Calcutta Cup disappointment at home to Scotland on the opening weekend.

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Yet, despite playing half of Saturday’s match at the Aviva Stadium with 14 men following a red card for Freddie Steward, England fought until the end against the world’s top-ranked side to restore some pride in a creditable 29-16 loss.

Aki backed Ireland’s rivals to emerge from a tricky transitional phase as a far stronger outfit, with the start of the World Cup less than six months away.

“We knew it was going to be tough,” he said. “We knew that England are a great team.

“Obviously they’ve had their little learning curves throughout this campaign and they can only go better. They’re a great team, they’re coached well and they’ve got unbelievable players.

“We knew they were going to come out and get us, and fair play to the boys for sticking that out.”

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While Borthwick and England have plenty to ponder, Ireland’s remarkable rise continues.

British and Irish Lion Aki hailed the title-winning heroics as a career highlight and feels there is more to come.

The Connacht player also expressed hope 37-year-old Ireland captain Johnny Sexton, who is expected to retire following the World Cup, will play again in the Six Nations as he aimed a playful dig at his veteran team-mate.

“We’re creating something special and we’ve just got to grab it with two hands and go with it,” said Aki.

“It was an incredible atmosphere. I’ve never ever seen anything like it.

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“It’s up there, top of the ranks. St Paddy’s weekend, Grand Slam, a few guys’ milestones, Josh Van Der Flier’s 50th (cap), Johnny – it could potentially be his last Six Nations.

“Hopefully not, hopefully he can come back again. He’s very young, 45 years of age, so he can still go again.”

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J
JW 10 minutes ago
How law changes are speeding up the game - but the scrum lags behind

Very good, now we are getting somewhere (though you still didn't answer the question but as you're a South African I think we can all assume what the answer would be if you did lol)! Now let me ask you another question, and once you've answered that to yourself, you can ask yourself a followup question, to witch I'm intrigued to know the answer.


Well maybe more than a couple of questions, just to be clear. What exactly did this penalty stop you from doing the the first time that you want to try again? What was this offence that stopped you doing it? Then ask yourself how often would this occur in the game. Now, thinking about the regularity of it and compare it to how it was/would be used throughout the rest of the game (in cases other than the example you gave/didn't give for some unknown reason).


What sort of balance did you find?


Now, we don't want to complicate things further by bringing into the discussion points Bull raised like 'entirety' or 'replaced with a ruck', so instead I'll agree that if we use this article as a trigger to expanding our opinions/thoughts, why not allow a scrum to be reset if that is what they(you) want? Stopping the clock for it greatly removes the need to stop 5 minutes of scrum feeds happening. Fixing the law interpretations (not incorrectly rewarding the dominant team) and reducing the amount of offences that result in a penalty would greatly reduce the amount of repeat scrums in the first place. And now that refs a card happy, when a penalty offence is committed it's going to be far more likely it results in the loss of a player, then the loss of scrums completely and instead having a 15 on 13 advantage for the scrum dominant team to then run their opposition ragged. So why not take the scrum again (maybe you've already asked yourself that question by now)?


It will kind be like a Power Play in Hockey. Your outlook here is kind of going to depend on your understanding of what removing repeat scrums was put in place for, but I'm happy the need for it is gone in a new world order. As I've said on every discussion on this topic, scrums are great, it is just what they result in that hasn't been. Remove the real problem and scrum all you like. The All Blacks will love zapping that energy out of teams.

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